Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members are noting that with this development, are the Regular MLAs considered an afterthought. I want to hear clearly in the House today that with any future announcements, MLAs will be invited to a process at least being aware of the particular project. In fact, when we saw people gathering in the gallery on Friday, they knew this particular project was being launched and I’ll tell you when the good news announcement seems to get trumped by process, it seems to affect all of us. So that’s the type of commitment I’m looking for from the Premier. Will he make sure that an e-mail just before the Assembly happens is not the type of communication time we’re talking about? Full information and sharing. Thank you.
There was no official signing and we are committed to sharing information with everybody, including the other side of the House. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask a question of the Premier following up on my colleague’s questions with regard to the announcement for Betty House. I have heard the Premier say that the money was approved in 2009, part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan in 2010 – I think in 2010 – and then he also said that the Standing Committee on Social Programs was advised in December of 2010. I wonder if the Premier could commit to providing the documents which would verify that. I have no recollection of that particular information being provided to Social Programs. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll provide this document, which is a dec that was presented in December 2011 to the Standing Committee on Social Programs. Thank you.
I have to ask the Premier to repeat his answer. I understood him to say, in the answer to my question, that information was given to Social Programs in December 2011, so I’m really confused now. Did we get information in 2010 in the previous Assembly or did we get information in December 2011 in this particular Assembly? I am still on Social Programs and I have no recollection of getting anything in December 2011 either.
The Member is correct; she got information in both 2010 and 2011.
Thanks to the Premier for that clarification. So again I would like to ask if we can get, as Members, a copy of the documents which went to the Standing Committee on Social Programs in December 2010 and the one that went to the Standing Committee on Social Programs in December 2011.
I have the dec from December 2011 right here and we’ll dig out the information from 2010 as well.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to commend the government on their Spectacular NWT promotion through ITI. I have a question for the Minister of ITI. Is this program a multi-year program and promotion?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, it is.
As I indicated, I do believe this is a good program. Does the government have some sort of evaluation process in place of how beneficial this program will be and how they will evaluate the results from the promotions?
With a marketing initiative like that you don’t see the results until sometimes two and three years down the road. Certainly one of the evaluation criteria is the number of visitors that end up coming to visit the Northwest Territories and those numbers are easily tracked.
I would like the Minister to maybe consider, or my question would be: Would the department look at creating some sort of evaluation process now so that you have a benchmark to compare your results for the next two or three years? I understand that it’s difficult to evaluate some of that stuff, but you have to have a benchmark that you’re comparing to for two or three years. Would the Minister commit to that?
Certainly, we have a number of sectors when it comes to our tourism that we have here in the Northwest Territories. When I spoke of statistics, we keep track of all the different sectors, whether it’s aurora viewing, fishing, hunting, general touring, outdoor adventure and things of that nature. We do have adequate statistics, which again, as we move forward with a marketing initiative like the Spectacular NWT, we will be able to two or three years down the road see where marketing initiatives like that may or may not have had an impact.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My final question is about the tour operators and how they will be involved in this promotion and can get involved in this Spectacular NWT.
Industry’s involvement is through the Northwest Territories Tourism. They have a board of directors there. They’re actively involved in the tourism industry here in the Northwest Territories. They do a great job marketing tourism here in the Northwest Territories to both tourists in North America and around the world.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services. I know we graduate nurse practitioners out of Aurora College but I’m learning from constituents that we are actually hiring those nurse practitioners into regular RN jobs rather than nurse practitioner jobs. This is sort of following up on my colleague’s for Hay River North questions. We need to make good use of these nurse practitioners. What’s going on here?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The positions of nurse practitioners are needed in the regional centres where they’re able to perform their full nurse practitioner jobs. Nurse practitioners are brought in and educated to become nurse practitioners so that they can be out in the field and providing much needed relief like physician-type of work. The nurse practitioners, when they end up wishing to remain in Yellowknife, do end up as registered nurses on many occasions because they have doctors in Yellowknife. I think seven of our nine nurse practitioners are located here in Yellowknife.
I don’t expect the Minister to have this information immediately at hand, but I wonder if he could provide us how many nurse practitioner positions there are in Yellowknife, in the regional centres and in other communities that are vacant at this time.
Just from memory I do believe there are two larger communities that have nurse practitioner positions. One is filled and the rest of the nurse practitioner positions are actually located in Yellowknife, but I don’t know how many of those are actually earmarked as nurse practitioner positions, off the top of my head.
Thanks for that immediate info. I appreciate the Minister’s response there. I wonder if the Minister could just confirm that and give us that information for each of our regional centres at least, including Yellowknife. The added aspect I’m interested in is the number of nurse practitioners who are hired in the Northwest Territories and where they are who are not in nurse practitioner jobs. I’d like to find out what the size of our resource is that we’re not using very well, for whatever reason, then we can explore that.
Yes, I can provide that information to the Member and the House.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk a little bit today about the concentration of specialized services in Yellowknife, when there are other communities outside of Yellowknife which are large enough and have great enough need to have some capital infrastructure to address some of these things.
In Yellowknife we have Betty House, Bailey House, the new dementia facility, a complex that completely accommodates people who require barrier-free access; a whole complex downtown Yellowknife for people who have physical disabilities who require barrier-free access. We have women’s shelters, we have all kinds of services here. These services and this infrastructure obviously came about as a result of a very organized and concerted effort on the part of organizations, NGOs, volunteers, fundraisers, which you have a lot to draw on here in Yellowknife. There are a lot of very community-minded people in Yellowknife and I believe that these facilities have come on stream as a result of those efforts.
But we have communities outside of Yellowknife. We don’t want to have to tell our people that if they want these services, move to Yellowknife. We have homelessness in Hay River as well.
I’d like to ask the Premier how we get our proposals for infrastructure on the table. Do we need to form community groups to put together proposals to appeal to the government for the millions of dollars that they get here in Yellowknife? What is our access? What is our avenue to this kind of support? We do need these and we can sustain these facilities outside of the capital.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re open to receiving any proposals that are brought forward by volunteers and non-government organizations and we would review them. In this particular case referencing Betty House, our government is only one contributor and generally the operator of the facility will be a non-government organization. In this case we found a way through the Building Canada Economic Action Plan to assist. I think in every instance we would try to find a way to assist.
If we were to take the population of Hay River and the population of Yellowknife and also examine the need for something like a homeless shelter in Hay River, probably on a ratio on population even, you could probably get a house – a smaller house than Betty House or Bailey House – in a community like Hay River or Fort Smith probably for $500,000 or $600,000. I want to take a clear message back to my constituents in Hay River. If we form a volunteer organization in Hay River that can identify the need, and identify a location and we fill out a proposal, is this government willing to entertain a similar facility in Hay River on a smaller scale?
Recognizing that the government contribution to Betty House is only a small portion, we would be prepared to entertain something on a similar basis percentage wise, I’m sure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, I will move that Bill 2, Interim Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2012-2013, be read for the first time.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Item 17, motions. Item 18, first reading of bills. Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 2-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012; and Tabled Document 3-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have a couple of items for consideration in Committee of the Whole today. What is the wish of committee? Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Committee wishes to consider Tabled Document 2-17(2) and Tabled Document 3-17(2).
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. We will resume, then, after a short break.
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I’ll call Committee of the Whole back to order. Today we’ve agreed to consider Tabled Document 3-17(2), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012. I’d like to ask Minister Miltenberger if he would like to present his opening comments.
